


A Galaxy Away From Home

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: The Travel Collection: Drabbles, Snippets, and Supershorts [20]
Category: Highlander, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, GFY, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:18:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets all written in the same AU, with no specific time-frame for when it diverges from canon beyond sometime after Julian and Garak become friends. The Highlander crossover is more drive-by mentioning of Methos than much else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unused Roads

His captors clearly possess technology far in advance of anything yet developed at home, yet there are still signs of a more primitive past kept more maintained than anything Garak has seen before. Garak doesn't yet know if this is to keep their slaves ignorant of the extent of their technology - not that anyone with the intelligence to observe their surroundings would fail to notice that - or to lull some of the more stupidly rebellious into thinking that fleeing along unused roads will allow them to escape. Nor does he truly wish to find out first hand. Watching others who are so foolish - and using them to find weaknesses in his captors' defenses - and making himself indispensable to his temporary masters is a far more assured method of securing his own escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "road".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [The Ever-Changing Road](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/749674).


	2. Complex

The controls of the craft are entertainingly complex, at least at first glance. He's very careful to pretend a certain amount of vague interest that can be discouraged with a glossing of them being too complicated to explain when he'll never need to use them anyway. It's never good to be entirely uninterested in his position, but neither is it good to be too interested.

He manages, over the course of several journeys, to get enough covert looks at the controls in action to determine they're not as complex as they look. Many of them, indeed, are redundant, or have no real function save to prevent the uninitiated and harried from using the craft to escape by looking important.

So long as they don't do anything to shut the craft down, he'll be able to pilot them out of their captor's area of space, and start figuring out how to get home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "cove".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Ocean's Edge](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/749690).


	3. Bitter Cold

Winter on the planet he'd been taken to meant bitterly cold winds that howled around his temporary master's estate, and leeched every bit of warmth from the halls. Garak cursed it, and his own biology, with equal fervor as he piled on as many layers as he'd been given, and tried to remain in the warmest areas of the estate. It put a small crimp in the escape plans, but they would work it out, and he and Methos would leave this blasted planet and its horrid winters behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "wind".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Sky-Song](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/1471349).


	4. A Lack of Sharing

There are forests on the planet below, broad ones that cover hills and the slopes of mountains, and march across flatter areas to the sea. Garak can see plains, too, but there are fewer of them than there are forests - it is a wet planet, then, in many ways, and the land masses small enough to support the tall-growing trees. On one of those land masses is a clearing in the trees nestled at the feet of hills that is far more regular than he would expect of a natural break in the forest.

He glances at Methos, and he knows by the speculative expression on the human's face that he's noticed the clearing as well. If it is made by some sort of civilization, they'll have to take care in how they approach it, particularly with the ship they have stolen. Especially since they've yet to find Julian on any of the planets which had been in the navigation charts of their vessal.

Near the shore of the same continent there is a more natural plain, and its there that Garak sets the ship down, locking the controls so no one can operate the ship before they return - it's a useful trick, learned from watching his former masters and from the work it had taken to break the locks without being caught at it.

"If your Julian is here, what do you plan to do?" Methos hasn't shared his own plans with Garak, and Garak sees no reason to share his with Methos. Their only mutual planning, indeed, had been their escape from their former masters. Garak doubts it will change any time soon; they're both far too accustomed to keeping secrets close, and not trusting anyone else.

"Why, whatever the good doctor wishes." Garak gives Methos a wide, terribly sincere smile that is nothing of the sort, and they're both aware of it. "Surely you didn't expect anything else, my friend?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "tree".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Branching From the Center](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/1539051).


	5. True Dark

When night falls on the planet, it's truly dark, without even the dim light of a station night, or the light pollution of nights on Earth. Julian appreciates that even when it leaves him wishing for familiar faces he might never have a chance to see again. Even if he returns to the galaxy and quadrant he calls home, he doesn't know how long the journey here had been, spent as it had been in stasis of some sort. All the people he knows could be dead, or at the least, far older than they had been.

Yet, the one he dreads most finding is dead isn't Ezri or Kira or any other of the officers he's called friends. Finding that Garak is dead will be, he thinks, the worst blow. Or perhaps, worse, taken along with him, and left here to fend for himself against the slavers who'd kidnapped Julian, and the Bajorans and humans who made up so much of the population.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "dark".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Not Always the Absence of Light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/951873).


	6. Rain-Muted Light

The first rains signal spring, and he's still not seen a sign of Garak. Julian helps in the clinic with colds and flu, a couple broken legs when a party goes up into the mountains for a final, late hunt and finds a landslide instead. Makes himself useful and keeps himself busy as he waits for Garak to find his escape from wherever he is - Julian refuses to believe he's dead, though still in the Milky Way he might accept - and come here.

When he has time, he also tries to poke at what there is left of the alien ship, trying to figure it out. There are more controls than he expects, and the rain keeps the light levels too low to study them properly throughout most of the spring. He's not sure he wants to still be studying them by summer and clearer weather, but he doesn't know when, or even if, Garak will find this planet and him.

And if Garak doesn't, or assumes Julian dead or home, than Julian will have to find a way to rescue himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "rain".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [A Misty Veil](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/1276502).


	7. Seven Years

The runabout is found drifting in space with damage to the impulse engines and no life support. Everyone fears finding bodies inside, but Julian and Garak are both missing. At first, it's thought to be a Cardassian attack, but the damage done doesn't have the signature of Cardassian weapons - and there is blood inside that doesn't belong to any known species.

Which means there is a new menace out there, and that the two are missing. How, where, and why are questions no one has an answer to - and cannot answer over the next seven years. Until an unfamiliar ship comes out of warp near Deep Space Nine, and a familiar voice hails them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "Missing".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [All of a Question](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/1680257).


	8. Empty Space

Julian has never been more glad to see a nebula so close before, and he smiles for a moment before he looks over at Garak. "Do you think you can fly us home, Garak?"

He'll miss the people in the settlement, miss the sense of adventure and camaraderie that came of being in the ultimate frontier town, but he wants to have the chance to go home, to see old friends as well as new. Otherwise, it's an unintentional exile, and he's been chafing against that the entire time he's been on the planet they'd left behind the day before.

"In time, my good doctor." Garak is watching the holographic star chart that overlays their view of the nebula, with faint lines of light that represent routes the ship has taken in the past. Julian studies it as well, though he has no idea how to make the ship follow any one of those routes - he'd never quite figured out how to work the ship on the planet. Garak had offered to remedy that before they left, and had certainly helped make sure Matthew had at least a basic grasp of the controls before they'd left.

Matthew is one of the settlers Julian will miss, as much because Matthew is Immortal as anything else. The stories Matthew can tell of Earth's history are fascinating, and Julian hopes he'll be able to return to hear more of them. Or that Matthew will decide to come back to the Milky Way after all, and they'll meet on the station or on Earth.

"I do believe this is the one we want." Garak touches one of the lines of light, the hologram shifting so he can follow it to its destination - in empty space between stars, disturbingly close to a major shipping corridor between Vulcan and Earth. "A brief stop, and from there, home." He smiles, and Julian can't help but echo it, with home now so close he can almost taste it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "Cloud".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Storms and Sunsets](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/1848918).


	9. The Dance

Garak leans back against the side of the bed he hasn't been able to bring himself to sleep in, eyes half-closed as he tries to rest. There's nothing they can do but wait while the ship speeds through space in the fragile safety of a warp-bubble that folds space faster than anything either the Federation or Cardassia have created. Julian has taken to trying to understand the cryostorage they'd been transported in before, spending most of the day down in the holds Garak avoids as he would any too-close space.

He ignores the fact that he'd spend the day there with Julian if Julian would but ask. Of course, Julian has, in that too-direct and blunt manner of humans, and Garak of course refused. It wouldn't do to be too eager, for all that he finds himself contending with an odd hollow feeling when Julian's expression falls. He'd compensated for it the first time by pointing out that the cryostorage in this ship was unlikely to be used for living cargo.

It still _could_ be used for living cargo, though, and that's all Julian needs as an excuse to take them apart. It might improve the cryostorage the Federation uses, or that of Cardassia, but even so, Garak doesn't think it's a particularly good use of Julian's time.

The crew quarters of the ship aren't any better for keeping Garak occupied - or for keeping him from shivering at the closeness of the walls. Only the captain's quarters are spacious, and he'd known that before he stole it from its previous owner. Before he'd freed himself and Methos, and found his way to the planet that had been marked as interdicted on the navigation.

Tilting his head back, he studies the ceiling once more, and the sinuous lines of the alien art that decorates the space above the bed. It's delightfully obscene, in an abstract way, though he's uncertain if the aliens had found it so, or if it served another purpose for them. He keeps studying what he can of the aliens who'd once been his masters, so he can be sure to out-maneuver them even if they come face to face once more.

"Are you really that bored?"

The only thing Garak doesn't understand about this ship is the lack of doors that close - save in an emergency - between any of the rooms. Even the hold is open under most circumstances, and with Julian's lack of shoes that clatter and clack on the metal flooring, he's become better at sneaking up on Garak.

"Perhaps." Garak looks over at Julian, a bland smile on his face. "Did you solve the question of the cryostorage?"

"No." Julian is watching him without moving, a small furrow between his brows that tells Garak just how deep his thoughts run. "Join me for lunch, Garak." It's not a request, and if there's something more to it than a desire to eat together, Julian is pretending he's not making a greater offer, and Garak is pretending he's not hearing one.

The dance begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "Hollow".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Lost Deeps](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/2020100).


	10. Complicated

The flowers of the garden are beautiful, but Kira isn't paying attention to them at the moment. Is trying not to pay attention to anything, trying not to think too hard, because if she does, she'll start trying to figure out what's happening with Julian and Garak.

And that anything is happening is making her head hurt already. No one had been sure what happened when they vanished, and now they've returned together with fantastic tales of another galaxy - which is borne out by the data from the unfamiliar ship they'd been in - and something between them no one is quite able to identify.

Well, not _no_ one, but no one who isn't a Cardassian. And those Cardassians who have been through since Julian and Garak returned have refused to enlighten anyone, though a few have smiled indulgently, and said it's too complicated for those who aren't Cardassian - or Julian - to understand.

Letting out a sigh, Kira turns away from her attempts to keep herself calm and focused. "Computer, end program." At least she can be sure that Quark isn't selling a faulty program with this one. Just that she's too worked up for anything to really soothe her, except perhaps finding out just what _is_ going on between Julian and Garak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Garden of Eden](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/2052277).


End file.
